From mental health & arts to software engineer in under a year. Passionate about tech for good. Will inevitably end up writing about how coding makes me feel too…
I am not denying the existence of the power dynamics described in the article, or by you - and if you had read my other comments you would know that. I just still fail to see how the tweet in question is conclusively an example thereof. Living in a society that is shaped by various sexist and racist power dynamics is not mutually exclusive with this Tweet not being a great example of these dynamics in action. Where you saw callousness and potentially even malice enabled by power dynamics, I saw frustration.
My default assumption when seeing the tweet was not "damn, look at how society's power dynamics have enabled this white cis het male to tweet this way", it was "wow, I bet it must be a bit upsetting to see someone with 100k+ followers tweet an article that literally likens your creation to a fart. I wonder how I'd deal with that".
I agree that the tweet was not the most graceful way to handle things, and ideally as a public creator you'd have thick enough skin to accept feedback and move on without any backlash. But I also know that emotional regulation is HARD. I used to work in mental health, and I know these things are more difficult for some than others.
Bottom line, the tweet is something I can see myself tweeting too in his shoes, on a bad day, badly hurt. But I think what you're saying here is that coming from me, a woman, these words wouldn't incite harassment, because the power dynamics are different? Makes me feel like I'm the one with the privilege of being able to freely express my feelings on Twitter, then... I'm really trying to understand here, because the last few days of conflict, even harassment, due to my opinion being the minority one, have been hard.
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I am not denying the existence of the power dynamics described in the article, or by you - and if you had read my other comments you would know that. I just still fail to see how the tweet in question is conclusively an example thereof. Living in a society that is shaped by various sexist and racist power dynamics is not mutually exclusive with this Tweet not being a great example of these dynamics in action. Where you saw callousness and potentially even malice enabled by power dynamics, I saw frustration.
My default assumption when seeing the tweet was not "damn, look at how society's power dynamics have enabled this white cis het male to tweet this way", it was "wow, I bet it must be a bit upsetting to see someone with 100k+ followers tweet an article that literally likens your creation to a fart. I wonder how I'd deal with that".
I agree that the tweet was not the most graceful way to handle things, and ideally as a public creator you'd have thick enough skin to accept feedback and move on without any backlash. But I also know that emotional regulation is HARD. I used to work in mental health, and I know these things are more difficult for some than others.
Bottom line, the tweet is something I can see myself tweeting too in his shoes, on a bad day, badly hurt. But I think what you're saying here is that coming from me, a woman, these words wouldn't incite harassment, because the power dynamics are different? Makes me feel like I'm the one with the privilege of being able to freely express my feelings on Twitter, then... I'm really trying to understand here, because the last few days of conflict, even harassment, due to my opinion being the minority one, have been hard.